There are plenty of these floating around with the DStv service, much of it due to the very wide and subject to changes variety of what's on offer and at times its associated complexity.
After all the years I've been involved I can honestly say there's still plenty to learn. For example yesterday 3 separate misunderstandings were corrected.

A major attraction to this forum for me is the fact that so much more can be understood here with all our combined efforts, I've seen that other forums discussing the service are filled with confusion and misunderstandings. MC really should consider having a very brave representative involved with some of them.

Why the thread?
We aren't all interested in the same things, so not everyone will have seen basic revelations affecting our general understanding in places like a tech thread, pensioners' interests thread, and another discussing naming conventions.
The idea is to share / discuss some of those perceived as important here, and for posting related queries that Mods or others among us can help answer.

It's easy to think that those of us here are representative of the "subscriber base" (MC's term for us), naturally attracted regulars share many common interests and conceptions. Not true, the service tailors to a very wide segment of our population which as we know has vastly different cultures and interest groups.
I for one believed, based on our discussions here, that not many keep a lot of their recordings for lengthy periods as we seem more interested in quickly watching the more popular series and movies before moving on to even more.

Not so, a survey by MC has determined (to an unknown to us degree) that most subscribers keep their recordings long term.

2. Misconceptions about MC's partnerships / "sister" companies.

Without too much (initial?) detail - these relationships are not well understood. We tend to presume that it's all the same boat, at least as far as influence goes.
What happens at M-Net is not necessarily something MC can answer about themselves, and at other times there will be a cooperation we don't realise. It's a similar but different situation with for instance the separate company with a similar name that handles the other African country's services.
I think it's probably best to ask first.

3. Product names / abbreviations.

Some that are / were believed to be MC's official terms are not so.
Yesterday's example - the 4 tuner HD PVR decoders are not alternatively called the 4U and 4P.
And about abbreviations - some of them are Forumite invented. We do try to keep that to a minimum, though it is considered very necessary by some of us. Don't be shy to ask what they mean.

Without too much (initial?) detail - these relationships are not well understood. We tend to presume that it's all the same boat, at least as far as influence goes.
What happens at M-Net is not necessarily something MC can answer about themselves, and at other times there will be a cooperation we don't realise. It's a similar but different situation with for instance the separate company with a similar name that handles the other African country's services.
I think it's probably best to ask first.

It's really not that hard to understand this. A simple look at the parent company's financials is actually quite illuminating, in a number of ways.

I'm AFK for a few days so hope others will hop in if there's any queries.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OrangeII

It's really not that hard to understand this. A simple look at the parent company's financials is actually quite illuminating, in a number of ways.

Sure, although I don't think a lot of people are into looking at or practiced with financials So, for those who haven't seen it here's a copy of the layman's summary that MC Marietjie posted this week (quoting structure removed to make it easier to read);

Ok folks, let's clarify the whole ownership thing. MultiChoice South Africa Group is the holding company that sits under Naspers' Video Entertainment division. In that holding company is MultiChoice South Africa which offers you DStv in South Africa, MultiChoice Africa which offers your DStv and GOtv in the rest of Africa (48 countries), M-Net which offers channels under the M-Net, kykNET, Mzansi and Africa Magic brands to both MultiChoice South Africa and MultiChoice Africa, SuperSport which also offers channels under that brand to both businesses and DStv Media Sales that sells advertising on both platforms.

There are two companies called MultiChoice Support Services and Video Entertainment Technology that provide services to the Group and under which eg HR, IT, Broadcast Technology, Corporate Affairs, Marketing, etc falls. This is just FYI to be factually correct but essentially the paragraph above summarises this.

There is a CEO for each of these businesses with a leadership team and they report their financials separately, they have different strategic plans, pay tax separately and own separate broadcasting licenses (where relevant). Our Africa business is managed out of Dubai and South Africa out of Johannesburg.

M-Net is mainly in South Africa but has studios in Kenya and Nigeria, SuperSport is based out of Johannesburg but works across the continent. We buy the M-Net and SuperSport channels from them in the same way we buy BBC or FOX.

All of this information is freely available at MultiChoice.co.za or on the Naspers website.